Angry in the Great White North

Just what is the financial situation of the Liberal Party?

It rather depends on who you talk to. Reporters with the Globe and Mail and the National Post both filed stories from this week's Liberal Party leadership convention.

If you read the Globe and Mail, quoting Liberal Party National Director Steve MacKinnon, then things are just fine:

The Liberal Party of Canada has dug itself out of a deep hole of debt and by year-end should have a $4.4-million war chest ready to fight another election, party officials said.

"Gone are the days when all of you [in the news media] can speak about the debt-ridden Liberal Party," national director Steven MacKinnon told reporters yesterday at the party's Montreal convention.

Lloyd Posno, chief financial officer, told the convention the party is "in the best financial shape that it's been in for a long, long time," adding this means it will "have the funds needed to fund an election any time in the next few months."

The turnaround is a big improvement from the $3.3-million deficit the party had racked up by late 2003, around the time when it last changed leaders and Paul Martin took over from Jean Chretien.

But you'd be confused if, after reading this, you turned to the National Post, quoting Mike Eizenga, the Liberal Party president:

Their embrace of the new constitution followed warnings from two outgoing members of the national executive that the party was on the financial brink and out-of-touch with the grassroots. "We are just barely hanging on," party president Mike Eizenga told Liberal delegates attending the leadership convention.

He said the party, accustomed to getting its money from large corporate donors, did well to raise $6.5 million last year from small donors as required under new stricter fundraising rules. But, he said, the tally was almost three times less than the $16.5 million raised by the Conservative party. At the same time, it is a big spender.

"We are a cumbersome and inefficient organization," Eizenga said, complaining there are too many committees and commissions within the party.

The party’s financial woes include the $1 million it repaid to the federal government in the wake of the Gomery report, which found that money paid to Liberal-friendly agencies to promote federalism in Quebec had wound up in party coffers.

Primed with cash and soon ready to fight an election, or barely scraping by and choking on its own inefficiencies.

I'm interested to see if anyone in the media who has access to these people at the convention might try to reconcile these very different views of the Liberal Party financial situation.